Mickey Arthur really knows how to retract a compliment

1. Watching this game has been first of all one of the most boring things you could ever do much akin to self torture, and then suddenly yesterday one of the most interesting days of cricket i’ve watched. I love it when the ball is turning! (And the romantic in me loves it when the West Indies threaten that they might actually do well).

   Quite a disconnected comment that.

   Would you like a match report from a non cricketer friend about being one of 27 people in the ground on Friday?

   1. Can’t believe you’re even asking. Sounds perfect.

      1. Talking of match reports, I watched a day of first class cricket in India last year, with my 2 kids. we took some selfies and promptly left after consuming 2 rounds of ice-creams. I did follow that match later on TV live. would you like a match report of that?

      2. Bonus amateur international semi-topical third-hand match report:

         My Dad faced two balls of Bangladeshi bowling in Sicily last week after accidentally walking into the middle of a match and asking if he could “have a go”. The first ball was outside off-stump so he left it well alone, but he managed to get the second one off the metaphorical square.

         He tried to follow it up with some light conversation about Jos Buttler (it was the day after Buttler had “misplaced his rag” ), but they couldn’t find a common language which contained the word ‘argument’ or a satisfactory synonym.

      3. Yes please, Marees. Although we’re slightly concerned that you’ve already given much away.

      4. Excellent report, AP Webster.

      5. My only proper ‘match’ of note in my abortive cricketing career was in around 1996/97 during year 9 or 10 (this particular alma mater has recently hit the headlines for non-cricketing reasons: http://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/oops-school-sends-text-with-c-word-in-to-hundreds-of-parents/12/10/)

         Not being one of the sportier kids, I was surprised even to be allowed to bat, let alone open and managed an eyes-closed, flailed 6 off at least twice as many balls (a decent lick in those days), playing enthusiastically at and missing most of them, before being wrongly adjudicated caught behind. To this day I remain adamant I ‘never hit it’.

         Bowling proved an even more lucrative exercise with two overs of trundled, round-arm half-trackers yielding a pair of wickets for just the solitary run, one victim adjudged plumb in front by the PTSD-suffering Mr Palmer and the other a catch somewhere around mid-wicket from a top-edged mow. Both batsmen complete ‘duffers’ but they all count.

         A promising start but alas that was it, apart from a brief net session for Pollok CC a decade or so later wherein an attempted off-break ended up on the roof of the net, to universal derision. You just know when it’s time to go.

      6. Can’t believe you’ve frittered that gold dust away in the comments section. What’s with you people? What do you think we actually want from a match report? We want this, pretty much.

      7. What the comments section lacks in readership, it makes up for in immediacy.

         (Is immediacy a made-up American word like ‘normalcy’? Should it really be “immediateness”?)

         Plus there’s no pressure in the comments section to write up the match report from the point of view of every inanimate object in the vicinity like some sort of cricketing Kurosawa film (no offense is intended to Ged, by the way, but he sets a high bar in terms of effort).

      8. I assure you, APW, the effort is far more with the reader than with the writer in the matter of those anthropomorphic artifact’s match reports. I believe that KC is sitting on but one more of those, before that literary device is retiring from all forms of KC match reporting.

         No more excuses now – get scribbling them match reports.

      9. You have to consider all the email subscribers who never see the comments. Should they miss out just because they’re too lazy to click through? (We can say what we like about them here, they’ll never know.)

   2. BTW, APW, I now realise that your Kurosawa/Rashomon reference relates to multiple angles on the same story, a device I have used once and once only.

      I should perhaps also add that, if all goes according to plan, Ivan Meagreheart The Smartphone will be retiring from all forms of communication tomorrow. He’s ready to hang up his sim card; he’s had his (silicon) chips.

   3. I was one of a handful on thursday night when I turned up for the last hour. I havent smiledfor as many photos sincemy wedding. But posed with Chacha Cricket who seemed a lovely guy.

2. The “I’m not going to say X but here’s me saying X” formulation seems to be especially popular in cricket (and sport in general) at the moment.

   In particular, I can’t remember the last time I saw/heard a coach or player say “There’s no excuse” or “I’m not making excuses” without it immediately preceding or following an excuse.

   1. One man’s explanation is everyone else’s excuse.

      1. Hey, it beats “We’re a young team, we’ll learn from this and take the positives.”

         Ashes 2006/07 flashback.

3. INCOMING FACT

   Azhar Ali’s 302* & 2 is the largest difference between two scores for one batsman in a Test match, beating McCullum’s 8 & 302 against India in 2014.

   END OF FACTS

   1. Top facting. Do you think he had the record in mind in the second innings? Must have been getting nervous as he neared McCullum’s landmark.

   2. Facts? FACTS???

      1. Curse my lack of html skills! http://www.espncricinfo.com/magazine/content/story/1062084.html

   3. Alas, Howe_zat, you did not fact-check this particular fact. You can prove anything with facts. That’s a fact.

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